1971

It’s the great whodunit of the civil rights era. In 1971, eight citizens broke into a Pennsylvania FBI office, stole classified files, and began leaking them to the press. The files revealed the FBI’s deliberate and illegal actions to infiltrate and disrupt activist groups, and the Washington Post’s publication of a story helps launch an investigation into U.S.’s surveillance methods, and an FBI manhunt, as they search for the burglars. More than 40 years later, nobody knew who stole the files … until now. Johanna Hamilton’s gripping documentary features the first interviews with the fearless citizens who shone a spotlight on a then-corrupt institution. (U.S., 2014, 79m, DCP)